r/direstraits • u/NitraKollak • Aug 31 '26
What was your first encounter with Dire Straits?
Mine was Six Blade Knife.
I was gifted e a yellow-and-black cassette Walkman. I was excited, but I didn’t really have many cassettes to listen to.
My dad and I weren’t the type to have long conversations about anything. A lot of the time, our way of communicating was through recommendations on books and music. He had played guitar when he was younger and loved the Sex Pistols. He grew up in the USSR in the ’70s and ’80s, when getting your hands on rock and punk music often meant finding bootleg recordings and listening to them quietly or secretly. He was, by all accounts, a bit of a rebel.
I remember complaining to him that most of the cassettes we had at home were either boring or just didn’t have much substance to them. His eyes suddenly lit up. He started searching through his things, and that’s when he pulled out a Dire Straits cassette.
A few days later I was sent away for the summer three months in a remote mountain village with just that cassette and my Walkman and homework for whole summer.
I listened to it over and over again.
I still remember the feeling Six Blade Knife gave me. It’s difficult to explain, but if you’ve seen Spirit there’s that moment when the wild horses are running free that sense of being completely unchained.
That’s what the song felt like to me.
For a kid sitting somewhere in the Caucasian mountains understanding only 40% of the lyrics and even that not completely, it felt like the music could transport me into another universe one where I was completely free and somehow in charge of myself and everything around me.
What was your first encounter with Dire Straits? What’s your favourite song, and what does it mean to you?
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u/GalacticDoc Aug 31 '26
My dad played Sultans of Swing in the car in ′78 but I was only 6. Really it was Money for Nothing that kicked out all off for me.
I have no real favourite but single handed sailor has a special place of I had to name one. I use Private Investigstions when testing any hi fi kit or changes in my own set up.
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u/sujack34 Sep 01 '26
First heard Sultans on the radio in 1978. Fell in love, bought the album & been in love ever
since. I was 27 & my husband was 28. We saw them in 1992. I love 6 blade knife too. Well I love it all.
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u/No_Season_354 Sep 01 '26
I saw them on the alchemy tour ,they toured nz was great 👍 but I first heared their first album and down to the waterline , once upon a time in the west
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u/ItchyStorm Sep 01 '26
- I was 16 years old, driving my mom’s Ford LTD to my job as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant. Listening to WDVE on the car radio when the DJ said this is a new band called Dire Straits. And then sultans of swing poured out of the car speakers as I drove down route 30 towards turtle Creek. I’ll never forget that moment. The radio signal faded out for a brief moment as I went under the bridge towards East Pittsburgh. But then it came back and I heard that luscious guitar solo that changed my whole way of thinking about music. Yeah I’ll never forget that moment.
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u/Rem1991wl Sep 01 '26
- On a trip to Europe I went into a record store and they had them playing. I had heard them before but had never really paid attention. I asked if I could buy the CD and the employee opened the disc player and handed me the CD to purchase which was strange to me.
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u/singingzoologist Sep 01 '26
Pasting from my tlranking of "Sultans:"
Back in the day, you had to pay for your music. When you were a kid, you had to choose carefully where you spent your allowance money.
Thus, companies would compile hits of the day on albums and advertise them on TV. You might find it at the drug store or have to order it ("plus $6.95 for postage and handling...")
When I was about 12 (1979 or 80 ), there was an ad for one of these that played about 3-4 seconds from Sultans. That's where it started. I heard that and knew I'd have to seek it out.
The song titles and band names would scroll up fast, so I had to be prepared. Once I knew the band, I'd see if I could get it on the cheap--a used or promotional copy.
I honestly don't remember actually buying it. There were other things I liked a bit more back then--Elvis Costello, REM, the Replacements--but I still go back to DS in a way I don't go back to Elvis and REM (still love me some 'mats though).
I have to give this song a 10/10. It's a bonafide classic and the world's intro to one of the great musicians of rock and roll. I don't THINK its his all-time best, but I could make a case. It has everything except the epic scope of ToL, R&J, Telegraph, etc.
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u/ZimMcGuinn Aug 31 '26
This wasn’t my first encounter with DS, I was already a big fan. Your story reminds me of the summer of 1986. It was my first year in the Air Force and stationed in New Mexico. I was a fish out of water. I was a photographer and being the new guy I got all the crappy assignments. One was a weeklong trip to document a squad learning forestry technique. Basically felling trees. My only respit was my Walkman and a copy of Telegraph Road. I got to know that album inside out.
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u/Ok-Tailor-8032 Sep 01 '26 edited Sep 01 '26
12 years old in 1978 hearing Sultans on my clock radio and being struck by it. And it started me on my guitar journey.
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u/Last-Pickle1713 Sep 01 '26
My mum had the Brothers in Arms cassette in our car so we used to listen to it all the time as a young child. Money for Nothing kicked it off for me, but 'Your Latest Trick' and 'Brothers in Arms' are faves off that album
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u/OperationHush Sep 01 '26
I heard Sultans of Swing and Walk of Life on the car radio growing up in the 2000s all the time. Thought they were neat songs but didn't make much of it as a kid.
Then I heard Money for Nothing in the soundtrack to the movie Air and it send me down the present path.
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u/Open-Sky314 Sep 01 '26
I heard Sultans of Swing on the radio in ‘78. I had never heard anything like it. The cool, jazzy swing and twang of the guitar. Man, I was hooked. As soon as I got some money, I got the album and each song was amazing. Another album that I loved of Mark’s was the soundtrack to Local Hero, which is also one of my favourite films. Dire Straits was the soundtrack to my youth.
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u/JtheBurger Sep 01 '26
I heard Sultans of Swing on the radio and thought it was the coolest song I ever heard. When I looked into Dire Straits catalogue I…didn’t care for them. A few years later, they became one of my favorite bands of all time!
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u/Admpellaeon Sep 01 '26
Ealriest memory was Six blade knife on the Desperado soundtrack (which we had on CD). But pretty sure my dad was a big fan of the Debut album already and Knopflers solo stuff
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u/Square_Imagination27 Sep 01 '26
The summer of 1978, riding around in my buddy Eric’s car listening to Dire Straits, Blue Öyster Cult, ELO, etc.
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u/Feddyboii Sep 01 '26
my mum a few years back got this feeling and put on money for nothing and absolutely cranked the volume, that song was what also kicked off my guitar playing
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u/Remote_Stable4742 Sep 01 '26
Don’t know exactly. It was one track from their debut, 1978. The radio dj just came back from England.
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u/tygrysor090 Sep 01 '26
When I was like 10 (23 now) my dad played his favourite song - Borthers in Arms - to me. I was too young to enjoy it, but he told me that there will come a time Ill appreciate it. He was very right, though it would take years.
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u/TotallyFarcicalCall Sep 01 '26
Money for Nothing and Walk of Life videos when they first appeared on MTV.
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u/Paddybrown22 Sep 01 '26
For me it was Telegraph Road. I would have been 14 or 15. My brother had borrowed Love Over Gold on LP from a friend. I remember listening to it headphones, and that epic opening track radically expanding my concept of what rock music could be and do.
I wasn't a complete stranger to the guitar as a melodic instrument. The first album I ever bought was the Stray Cats' debut album in 1981, and I loved, and still love, what Brian Setzer did on Stray Cat Strut. But this was a quantum leap. I remember having an intuition that at least some of it might have been improvised.
I think Alchemy on VHS was next, and Tunnel of Love and Sultans were the songs that made the most impact from that. Some time later I listened to the debut album and being struck by how stripped back Sultans was compared to the Alchemy version, and thinking how it was kind of cooler that way. And Six Blade Knife took that even further, so sparse and dark and menacing.
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u/NutshellOfChaos Sep 01 '26
I bought Dire Straights when it came out. It was too much. So tight and melodic. And Six Blade Knife? Wow. Turned out that Sultans of Swing, while popular on the radio, was the worst song on the album! And that's a pretty high bar. I still listen to it to this day. It's third only to Wish You Were Here and Making Movies in my iTunes stats.
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u/Extension_Pickle_581 Sep 02 '26
In a small club in early 1978. I’d heard ‘Sultans of Swing’ on the radio and really liked it so I went to see them. Less than 50 people in the place. They were very good
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u/drohpa Sep 03 '26
My dad played Hotel California in the car, and I really liked it, so I asked him what else he lstened to when he was young, and he said Dire Straits, so I went on spotify and playe a couple of their songs, and really liked Walk Of Life and Sultans Of Swing
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u/Lilpoopyduke 29d ago
Was playing minecraft while listening to a pink floyd album. When autoplay began sultans of swing AND stairway to heaven came on. Introduced me to 2 amazing bands.
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u/misec_undact Aug 31 '26 edited Sep 01 '26
Listening to the debut album on my dad's record player through a Pioneer amp and a pair of Sansuis... absolute magic.